You’re at a “fast” food place. The lunch crowd is out the door. The service seems so s-l-o-w.

At the order counter, customers are craning necks at the new menu boards. The chain, being suddenly health (marketing) conscious, has added ingredients and nutritional values to its menus.

“Let’s see, is that fat the good fat or the bad fat?”

Pity the poor counter workers suddenly needing dietitian degrees.

Our military recently faced counter jams when they began listing nutritional values at their dining facilities, but they came up with a totally genius scheme that solves the problem.

IT’S IN THE DOTS

Our military has a response for everything.

Instead of nutrition lists, they use colored dot stickers:

Green — “Eat all you wish.”

Yellow — “OK to eat occasionally.”

Red — “Eat rarely or avoid.”

The most-common snack once was chips and a soda. It’s peppered with red dots. The new favorite is celery and carrot sticks with green dots. Fresh fruits are green all over at the snack kiosk, cookies are yellow, pork rinds are red.

This system uses a simple glance to satisfy nutrition concerns. The dots lopped 3.81 minutes off the MDP (menu decision process).

Our military has a vested interest in healthy troops. As dietary concerns spread in civilian life, our purveyors have a vested interest in balancing what the market wants to what it needs. The dots fill in the gap between ignorant and smart eating, and you don’t need to read anything.

For those of you wondering, the chicken-fried steak smothered in gravy is red dot all the way.